Romney Spokesperson: Priorities USA Ad Subject Would Have Had Health Care Under Romneycare

» 33 comments

Appearing on Fox News Channel with anchor Bill Hemmer, Mitt Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul attacked a pro-Barack Obama PAC ad which links the GOP presidential candidate to the cancer-related death of a former steelworker's wife. Saul veered off message, however, when she said that the fired steel worker would have had access to health care if he had lived in Massachusetts where, under Romney's plan, health care coverage is extended to the uninsured.

RELATED: CNN Fact Checks Priorities USA Ad Blaming Mitt Romney For Woman's Death

Hemmer asked Saul about the substance of the ad. She said that while she felt the circumstances which former GST Steel employee Joe Spotic faced were sad, the pro-Obama PAC's ad was misleading and inaccurate.

'I think that President Obama's attacks have been so low and so despicable on a personal level that they're backfiring on him,' said Saul.

Earlier, Saul said that Spotic and his deceased wife, who passed away from cancer in 2006, would have had access to health care coverage under Mitt Romney's controversial universal health care coverage plan he passed as the governor of the Bay State.

'If people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care,' said Saul.

Saul's invocation of Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts sounds an atonal note considering how much time the former governor's campaign has spent attempting to distance himself from his expansion of health care coverage for residents of the Bay State.

Romney never expressly denounced his plan, which is unpopular with the conservative wing of the GOP and dogged him during the Republican presidential primaries, but he has also never touted the benefits associated with his plan. Some have said Romney's health care coverage expansion plan served as a blueprint for President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

Watch the segment below via Fox News Channel:

> >Follow Noah Rothman (@Noah_C_Rothman) on Twitter

• Willard's soshulist healthcare plan? You don't say! 

• Mixed messages much?

  Why is that woman still working for Mitt Romney? Her teeth? I can see little else she has going for her.

• She had healthcare under her own employer anyhow, not her husbands. She only lost that coverage after she was let go from that job. But you cant fix the liberal warped brain. 

• Again with the flip flop?

• At least Romney's people tell the truth by mistake.

• You're right! This should really help Romney secure the uninsured vote   -___-

• Willard and GOP campaign, go to FOX lie and then have CNN carry it and have the rest follow.
  New report came out yesterday that states that last month, the President got  more negative coverage than Willard. Fox lead the way with 76% followed by CNN @60:disqus %, them CBS, NBC, and ABC.PBS is the last one with 51% negative. Shame on the media. Last month was the month Willard was as usual lying and embarrassing our country.

• ya'only if we had a national version of romeny care'only if'
  who is brave enough to impliment a national version of the conservative model of health care?
  we can only pray that some great president would have the stones to sign such bill of this conservative style health care into federal law..
  WHERE IS REAGAN WHEN YOU NEED HIM'
  ROMNEY CARE FOR EVERYONE~

• After the last few weeks, no one would hire Bill Burton, Harry Reid or Obama for anything.

  'Team Obama knows that the hollow man from 2008 is a real candidate now, and that he is not a particularly good one. They have seen him up close more than the rest of us have, and they know that he is an ideologue incapable of real leadership. But they have to keep him in power to keep themselves in power.

  The 'Mitt killed my wife!' ad isn't about truth. Bill Burton & co did enough research to find Mr. Joe Soptic. They did enough research to craft an ad from the man's sad story. They did enough research to know that Mrs. Soptic died seven years after Romney left Bain, they know that Bain tried to save GST, and they know that an Obama bundler was the person who ultimately shut GST down. They did the research, they brought the ad forward, and they know more than any of the fact-checkers know, that the ad is a lie.

  And they don't care.'

  http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/08/08/why-team-obama-ran-with-the-dishonest-mitt-killed-my-wife-ad/

• under romeny care she would have health care even if she and her husbands life long jobs had been shipped off to some foreign land so some vulture capitalist could make a few million off of slave labor..
  ROMENYCARE FOR EVERYONE..
  but the selfish hateful conservative mind only cares about itself'praise jesus

• Well Obamacare/Romneycare isn't bad after all or is it?

  Willard can't even make up his mind 

• In 2008, Obama couldn't lose.  Different story now.

  'Obama was a mass-marketed president to a country that wanted to feel good, and didn't want to do its homework on the man who wanted to lead them. He smiled broadly, said nice things, and got handed the keys to the country.

  But now, that same team has to sell a very real and very damaged product. They know they can't sell that product on its own merits. They know that Obama has had too many revealing and unscripted moments, the latest killer line being 'You didn't build that!'

  His job performance has been poor, and the people who elected him four years ago are skeptical of him now. Four years ago they wanted to feel good. Now, they just want jobs and to know that the future holds the promise of something good.

   'we're dealing with something in the Obama campaign that we haven't seen much at the top of American life, except in the worst moments of the Clinton era.

  We're dealing with a president who is entirely without any sense of ethics, honor or morals. He has lived a lie for most if not all of his life, hiding his true political convictions in gauzy language that makes him appear reasonable and moderate. Having lived a lie, what's one more lie, in the service of keeping himself in power? What's one more lie if, in Obama's mind, it accomplishes the 'good' of keeping Romney out of power?'

  http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/08/08/why-team-obama-ran-with-the-dishonest-mitt-killed-my-wife-ad/

• Spin spin spin avoid the facts that another Obama ad lies. Spin spin spin, hard work being an Obamazombie having to contort and twist reality day after day with each new LIE your hero throws against the wall. 

• Noah, this is message testing. It is called EtchAsketch!!!

• So they are for Obamacare aka Romneycare, these folks need to make their minds up. 

• It's Wednesday, aka another day. 

• It's stunning, isn't it? It's as if she considered what would be the worst possible remark she could make in this situation and then made the remark. It both calls attention to Romney's signature legislation, much maligned by the rightist, and underscores the need for the same on the national level, in the form of the ACA. I can't say anything else. I'm stunned at this.

• Whoops! In other words Obamneycare would've covered her. What joke this Romney campaign is. His surrogates can't keep up with his flip flops.

• The independent fact-checking organizations disagree with you about the facts in the ad. However, it seems almost everyone agrees, including a number of Republicans, that Romney is lying through his teeth in his or his PAC ads about the Ohio early voting law and welfare reform.

• Yet, the independent fact checking organization have agreed the facts are correct. I realize you may have trumped me with PJMedia, a well-known non-partisan, non-ideological site widely regarded for its truthfulness.

• This is amazing. This campaign f**ks up EVERYDAY! This has got to be a new record'

• The first rule for these spokespeople is don't become the story yourself. Don't distract from the central messages of your campaign.

  And yet time and time again that is exactly what these Romney people do.

•  Its part of the narrative. I am also stunned with such an admission, especially when the campaign has tried so hard to run away from RomneyCare in Massachusetts

•  The day isnt over yet. He might change his position by the end of the day

• 'I can't say anything else.'

  Oh, how we wish !!

• No wonder the Romney campaign is perhaps more pathetic than any presidential campaign in history, just really lame victim card throwing by this silly woman. The classic right wingnut double standard garbage as well, creepy crying about negative and dishonest ads when almost every ad produced by the Romney clowns has been shown to be a pack of lies.
  Just more proof right here in this video Romney and his team of clowns aren't ready for prime time.

• Excellent point MacHead84.  She had health care when she was employed but lost it when she no longer worked there.  The problem was, since Willard's company focuses on making money and not making jobs, Joe Spotic lost health care for his whole family when Romney and Bain closed down his plant.

  And could this spokesperson be more dense?  If the guy lived in Massachusetts he would have health care.  Beyond the stupidity that has been pointed out about bringing Romneycare back into the discussion,..The guy live in Kansas City!  If the guy lived in India or China, he could have starting working at one of the jobs Willard shipped over there.

• Yet, just today, Mika was talking about what a wonderful manager Romney, how tightly he runs all his operations. Can you imagine if he ran our country likes he does his campaign? Or, even like he ran the Middle of Nowhere Olympics depending upon millions and millions of dollars of US taxpayer subsidies?

•  But, how can you possibly question the conclusions of a writer named Allahpundit'.

  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

• According to Reuters, Obama has opened up a seven-point lead over Romney. The election is over, folks'.Romney cannot recover from the cancer ads and the other ads about Bain Capital. Nobody could beat Obama with the type of ads Obama is running. I know what you will say'you'll say none of the ads are true. It doesn't matter that they are true. It only matters that the media has accepted the ads and that the ads are running. If you think these ads have not destroyed Romney, you are just a fool with blinders on wandering around from the Drudge Report to The Blaze to Breitbart and the rest of the echo machine that contains nothing but synchophants.

• Miss Saul, I think you're supposed to leave gaffes (which pretty much means an accidental fart of truth) to Mitt himself. Then let him walk away from it before going back to it, not necessarily in that order.

• Now this is a REAL gaffe' although still not by Romney personally

• Romney has done as much damage to himself as anti-Romney ads have done.

  OFA deserves mountains of credit, though, simply for their mastery of keeping Team Romney on defense and off message. It's been a sight to behold.